In this section of the guide, we will go over each stat that an Affliction Warlock requires and explain how they function along with any possible stat caps that you will have to consider. Affliction Warlocks have a similar stat priority to other Intellect-based DPS specs.
Stat Priority
- Intellect
- Hit Rating
- Haste Rating
- Critical Strike Rating
- Mastery
Intellect is a primary stat, acting as the most important stat for Affliction Warlocks! It increases your Mana, Spell Power, and Spell Critical Hit Chance, massively empowering your overall damage output. Since Spell Power will mostly be gained from Trinkets/Weapons, Intellect will now be the predominant source of Spell Power for caster specializations.
Hit Rating is the most important secondary stat after your primary stat, Intellect, as you will require it to land hits on your target. You will need a 17% Hit Chance to ensure that your spells never miss against Boss-level enemies. Since you no longer have access to Suppression or any other Hit Rating-enhancing effects from your allies, you will have to gather the Hit Rating yourself. Each 102.45 Hit Rating results in a 1% Hit Chance.
Haste Rating is the next-best stat after Hit Rating, greatly increasing an Affliction Warlock’s performance. First of all, all of your DoT effects are subjected to Haste Rating, meaning that the more Haste you acquire, the faster your DoTs will tick. Additionally, Haste Rating reduces the overall casting speed of all of your spells, meaning that spells such as Unstable Affliction, Haunt, and Shadow Bolt can be effectively spammed with a high enough Haste Rating. Each 128.05 Haste Rating generates 1% Haste.
Critical Strike Rating increases the chance for your spells to deal Critical Strikes. This does not only apply to your Direct Damage abilities, as Damage-over-Time effects can now innately deal Critical Strikes. This is a huge buff to Affliction Warlocks, increasing the overall importance of Critical Strike Chance in their gameplay. Each 179.28 Critical Strike Rating results in a 1% Critical Strike Chance.
Lastly, Mastery is a new stat introduced in Cataclysm that enhances a specific effect for each different Specialization/Class in the game. In the case of Affliction Warlock, Mastery enhances the Potent Afflictions effect, increasing all the periodic Shadow Damage dealt to your targets. While theoretically, this effect should massively empower Affliction Warlocks, you will require far too much Mastery to make the effect viable, effectively hindering your other stats if you choose to stack Mastery. As such, this stat should only be prioritized last. Each point of Mastery increases all Magical Damage dealt by 1.63%.
Reforging
Reforging is introduced in Cataclysm as an additional way to adjust your equipment’s secondary stats. Through reforging, we can acquire a plethora of different stats in exchange for a portion of our current gear’s secondary stats. However, we may not replace any of the main stats on a piece of equipment such as Intellect or Stamina.
The main stats that Affliction Warlock will reforge any non-beneficial stats into are Hit Rating until the 17% Cap, followed by Haste Rating and Critical Strike Rating.
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